PEOPLE Party

It has been suggested that this article be merged with Ecology Party to Green Party (UK). (Discuss) Proposed since March 2021.

Part of a series on
Green politics
show Core topics Green politics Green party List of topics
show Four pillars Ecological wisdom Social justice Grassroots democracy Nonviolence
show Perspectives Bright green environmentalism Deep ecology Ecoauthoritarianism Eco-capitalism Ecofascism Ecofeminism Eco-nationalism Eco-socialism Green anarchism Green conservatism Green left Green liberalism Green libertarianism Green Zionism Social ecology Queer ecology
show Organizations Asia Pacific Greens Federation European Green Party Federation of Green Parties of Africa Federation of the Green Parties of the Americas Federation of Young European Greens Global Greens Global Young Greens
show Related topics Anti-environmentalism Climate change mitigation Conservation movement Eco-terrorism Ecocentrism Ecological economics Environmentalism Environmental issues Environmental justice Ecological modernization Environmental movement Green state Green theory Localism
v t

The PEOPLE Party was a political party in the United Kingdom, founded in February 1972. It was the first Green political party in the United Kingdom and Europe as a whole,^[2] and the political predecessor of the Green Party of England and Wales, the Scottish Greens and the Green Party Northern Ireland.^[2]

Origins[]

In the winter of 1972^[3] Lesley Whittaker, a surveyor and property agent, bought a copy of Playboy magazine in which there was an interview with Paul R. Ehrlich about overpopulation. This article inspired Whittaker and her husband Tony, a former Kenilworth councillor for the Conservative Party, to form a small group of professional and business people called 'Club of Thirteen', so named because it first met on 13 November 1972 in Daventry. This 'Club' included surveyors and property agents Freda Sanders and Michael Benfield, who had similar ideas to the Whittakers, and worked with them in their practice in Coventry.

Formation[]

Many in this 'Club' were wary of forming a political party however after a few weeks in November 1972 the Whittakers, Sanders and Benfield agreed to form 'PEOPLE' as a new political party to challenge the UK political establishment.^[4] Its policy concerns published in 1973 included economics, employment, defence, energy (fuel) supplies, land tenure, pollution and social security, as then seen within an ecological perspective. Subsequently recognized as perhaps the world's earliest Green party this had the first edition of the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society as a background statement of policies inspired by A Blueprint for Survival (published by The Ecologist magazine). The editor of The Ecologist, Edward 'Teddy' Goldsmith (elder brother of the financier James Goldsmith), merged his Italian 'Movement for Survival' with PEOPLE. Goldsmith became one of the leading members of the new party during the 1970s.

General elections[]

February 1974[]

The party stood six candidates in the February 1974 General Election. They received a total of 4,576. The party lost all of its deposits by failing to win 12.5% of the votes cast, namely a total of £900 (equivalent to £9,400 in 2019).^[5] Lesley Whittaker and Edward Goldsmith were two of the six who stood in the election.

October 1974[]

Membership rose and the party stood five candidates in the October General Election which cost the party £750. This affected preparations for that election,^{[citation needed]} when PEOPLE's average vote fell to just 0.7%.

1975 conference[]

After much debate, the party's 1975 conference adopted a proposal to change its name to the Ecology Party to gain more recognition as the party of environmental concern.^[7]

Party co-founder Tony Whittaker noted in an interview with Derek Wall '… voters did not connect PEOPLE with ecology. What I wanted was something that the media could look up in their files so that, when they wanted a spokesman of the issue of ecology, they could find the Ecology Party and pick up the phone. It was as brutal and basic as that. PEOPLE didn't communicate what we had hoped it would communicate'.^[4]

Derek Wall, in his history of the Green Party, contends that the new political movement focused initially on the theme of survival, which shaped the "bleak evolution" of the nascent ecological party during the 1970s. Furthermore, the effect of the "revolution of values" during the 1960s would come later. In Wall's eyes, the party suffered from a lack of media attention and "opposition from many environmentalists", which contrasted the experience of other emerging Green parties, such as Germany's Die Grünen. Nonetheless, PEOPLE invested much of its resources in engaging with the indifferent environmental movement, which Wall calls a "tactical mistake".^[7]

See also[]

• Values Party, considered the first national-level environmental party world-wide

References[]